Pistols have any actual use?

mewmaster101

I was doing some undine replay missions for the lols on my science character and decided to check out how useful pistols were, and the results did not seem very good.

Pistols seem to do a lot less damage than Things like Pulsewave Assaults, Split Beam's, and Snipers and have little to no advantage to them. Is it just me, or are pistols really that useless?

noblet

You can expose enemy for other ppl, and attract less aggro... so yeah, nobody uses them.;)

peetapipmac

I use them loads. I find it easier to flank enemies when using pistols.

reginamala78

Gives you a free hand for your tricorder. Plus how often did we see rifles in the show?

Less thematically/more mechanically though, compression pistols are actually pretty handy. 3rd highest DPS (IIRC) behind pulsewave and full-auto, medium range, and a good exploit altfire. Load your captain with Expose stuff like a full-auto/pulsewave combo, then let your boffs Exploit away (its one thing they do moderately well). It doesn't truly excel in any single area, but as a general-purpose well-rounded weapon, it has advantages.

dragonsbrethren

I've never actually run the numbers, but it certainly feels like I do more damage with a pistol over a rifle. Rifles take too long to cycle for my tastes.

aliensamongus

I go all-out Arnold Schwarzenegger and use the mini-gun on all my characters. I lob some stun grenades or photon/plasma. Get two engineers (or more) in your team and get Security Drones III on all of them. It's usually fun to watch.

I small varient is to give one or two the pulsewave shotgun-type. Usually it drops an entire group to be flanked by the spray of mini-gun rounds.

A nice tip for max effect on any type of weapon is to target the most behind enemy and position yourself so that they begin walking in a line. The enemies in front will also get hit. Good stuff.

janus1975

On most of my toons, I tend to use sniper rifles for distance shots and swap to pistols at close range. I'll give any bunkering engineering teams sniper rifles for the distance damage to keep them in a spot, while any close-combat tacticals will have pistols. Haven't run the numbers but feels to work better that way. Also, I find that non 'bolt' weapons like stun pistols just seem to require less re-frequencing with Borg missions.

noblet

Ground npcs turn instantly when they aggro you. Pistols end up getting the flank bonus because it's low on aggro.

baudl

i think all pistols have shorter cooldowns for both fire modes...to compensate for the shorter range.

sometimes range is not an issue, then a pistol becomes a good choice, but for average use they lack range.

personaly i find the compression pistols rather usefull, because of the short cooldown and large single target burst.

overlapo

I use the Elachi pistol from the lobi store all the time. Combine it with the powers of a fire team kit and you can do 3000+ damage with a single shot to everything in the target area.
But yeah, I don't usually bother with regular pistols, BOFFs aren't that great with rapid fire weapons.

diablerietandino

A compression pistol is a pretty good weapon, if you set your Boffs with expose weapons, It's exploit cycles extremely quickly and you can drop enemies in a fair amount of time. Of course it's not gonna sweep groups away like a good pulsewave but hey, it's there if you want to be different.

noroblad

pistols are for use if you want to spam the shoot button, a LOT. When you do that, dps is pretty solid and you are not locked in cooldowns as much as you are with the other guns. Personally, I hate mashing the button that fast, so I use them rarely, but there are times it is handy.

Personally I keep on hand a handful of weapons and pick between them for the enemy at hand. There are times when a pistol is what you need, good for swarms of weak targets or again when you do not want skill lockout from slow guns.

mewmaster101

HAve been trying the Compression pistol and it is loads better than the Stun pistol, and even the Wide beam and Split beam pistols have their uses, it just seems the Stun pistol and dual pistols are the bad one out.

keistermatz

noroblad wrote: »

Personally, I hate mashing the button that fast, so I use them rarely, but there are times it is handy.

You are aware there's a couple of autofire options in the Control Options, right? I usually go with "Autofire, Change Target Cancels" to avoid shooting at stuff I don't want to.

/M

kimmym

Pistols have a very strong primary fire, at the expense of a relatively weak secondary fire. High DPS, and the shot speed is quick so you can change targets or use other abilities quickly with little downtime between.

I use them when I just want too go "Zap, zap zap!" or am feeling canon.

warmaker001b

Pretty short cooldowns on some of them. My favored type of Pistol is either Wide Beam (Expose) or Compression (Exploit).

Compression Pistols in particular have very short secondary attack cooldowns that hit hard. Only Sniper Shots have a stronger hit and they have longer CDs and chargeup. Compression Bolts are very fast to get out, very fast to cooldown. They're ideal when you can Expose a target frequently. Combine a hard hitting Compression Bolt with an Expose effect, it chops down targets very quickly regardless of target quality.

Compression Pistols are also wonderful complements to TAC Captains utilizing the Close Combat Specialist Kit. Seeping Strikes can Expose Targets. The kit has Lunge III for max damaging Exposed Targets. But Sweeping Strikes has an insanely short CD and can be spammed. It's quite easy to nearly chain Expose effects. With Lunge III on CD, the trusty Compression Pistol with its Secondary Shot will hit hard and quickly in that window of opportunity. You can go back and forth between Lunge III and Compression Bolt with no problem.

theeishtmo

I put dual pistols on my giant Gorn. They look UTTERLY ridiculous, which is all the more reason to use them. That and it gives me time to run up and bite whatever I'm shooting at.